Thomas Ott On Saks Fifth Avenue and Men’s Wear

In his two decades at Saks Fifth Avenue, Thomas Ott, senior vice president, general merchandise manager of men’s, gifts and home, has seen some dramatic changes in the men’s wear category. The shifts range from tailored clothing’s rapid growth in the late Nineties when Saks was opening stores at a brisk pace in San Francisco, Florida and Houston to the popularity of casual Friday, to the aftereffects of 9/11 when men started getting dressed up again for job interviews to the influence of European fashion and designer sportswear and then the recession, where business was off 35 percent for two years. Now under new ownership and leadership, Saks is expanding again in both the U.S. and Canada. “As a company, we were kind of stalled. It was great working with some super people at Saks, [but] we didn’t have money to keep up with the Joneses. We couldn’t do any expansion. When you’re a men’s department in a women’s store you don’t get a lot of capex [capital expenditures], so you’re fighting for all the dollars. What’s really refreshing now is it’s more entrepreneurial and we’re going to grow stores again,” said Ott. In a conversation with Jean Palmieri, senior editor of WWD,

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